Rare stories in your inbox.

Oops, you forgot to select a newsletter. Select as many as you'd like!

Oops, you forgot to tell us your email address. Try again.

Advertisement

Marco Rubio doesn’t want to talk about the Hillary Clinton campaign emails that were hacked and released by Wikileaks. He also told ABC News he doesn’t think Republicans should talk about those emails either.

“As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge it,” Rubio told ABC. “Further, I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”

In any case, the emails are now in the public record and the press has a duty to examine them. I say that not just because I’ve written a story about them, but because the press has a duty to hold our political leaders accountable.

It’s ironic that Marco Rubio of all people is standing up for Hillary Clinton’s privacy. After all, Rubio has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for warrantless domestic surveillance.

In May of last year, Rubio voted against the USA Freedom Act, which reins in the NSA’s warrantless metadata collection program. “It eventually undermines our ability to collect information and to monitor those who seek to harm the United States,” he told Politico.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the existence of the metadata harvesting, along with another program that allows the NSA to read emails. Again, there are no warrants involved.

Rubio, unsurprisingly, has called Edward Snowden a traitor:

As I wrote when Ted Cruz said the same thing about Snowden in January of this year, “Calling for Snowden to face the legal consequences of his actions is one thing. Calling for him to be tried for treason is something completely different.” Treason is defined in the Constitution and Snowden’s actions do not meet those requirements.

Now, there is a way to prevent hackers from infiltrating emails: use more encryption. But Rubio has been critical of that, too. During a presidential debate in February, the Florida senator attacked Apple for fighting a federal order that would have unlocked the iPhone used by one of the killers in the San Bernandino mass shooting. “They are not asking for Apple to create a backdoor to encryption,” Rubio said. “Their brand is not superior to the national security of the United States of America.” The phone was later accessed without the help of Apple.

So Rubio is more concerned about the privacy of Hillary Clinton than that of the American people. That elitist mentality might be one reason he can’t put away Democratic mediocrity Patrick Murphy in his current reelection bid for the Senate.

Kevin Boyd is a general correspondent for The Hayride and an associate policy analyst at the R Street Institute. His work has been featured at IJ Review, The National Interest, Real Clear Policy, and the Washington Examiner. You can follow him on Twitter @kevinboyd1984